Sunday, October 28, 2007

Weekend Herb Blogging # 106: The Round-Up!

Kalyn kindly trusted me with hosting this week's Weekend Herb Blogging. It has been quite a task! There were 45 entries from far away corners of the world, including New Zealand, Alaska, India, France, Philippines, Spain, Scotland, England, Croatia, Brazil, Canada and USA.

To make this round-up more digestible, I've grouped the entries by the main ingredients. However, I didn't want to make it too easy for you either, so I've listed the ingredients alphabetically, in Estonian ;) I have provided the English equivalents, of course..

Happy browsing!

AEDOAD - GREEN BEANSLia of Swirling Notions blog has been cooking with Romano Beans. Lia grows them herself, and is actually looking for more recipe ideas for using these particular beans. So if you know a recipe or two, go and tell Lia!

The Queen of Vegetables, Alanna (St Louis, USA) of A Veggie Venture is also cooking with fennel this week. She shares a simple recipe for delicious-looking roasted fennel. Just look at those gorgeously caramelised fennel chunks!

BASIILIK - BASIL Maninas (Croatia) of Food Matters has given a new twist to the traditional tuna & mayonnaise sandwich by adding some basil leaves from her windowsill - the result is Tuna & Mayo Sandwich with Basil, Lemon and Black Pepper. Maninas reminds us that basil won the honorable title of the most popular herb of last year's Weekend Herb Blogging!

VegeYum of A Life(Time) of Cooking (Australia) made a kumquat marmalade and describes it as divine. Cannot disagree with that - I love when you can see tiny black vanilla seeds in your food - be it a kumquat marmalade, plum jam or vanilla custard!

KORIANDER - CILANTRO/CORIANDER Pam (TN, USA) of Sidewalk Shoes keeps always fresh parsley and cilantro/coriander in her fridge, as using fresh garnish makes all the difference in the world, as she says. She's using cilantro/coriander to garnish this great chicken tortilla soup.

KÕRVITS - WINTER SQUASH/PUMPKINThe originator of the Weekend Herb Blogging, Kalyn (Salt Lake City, Utah) of Kalyn's Kitchen has come up with a beautiful and colourful recipe for roasted butternut squash - an excellent recipe for the forthcoming Thanksgiving festivities! Thank you, Kalyn, for launching WHB two years ago, and for letting me host this time - it's been fun (though tough)!

Rosa (Paris&Nice, France) of Edible adventures in Paris, Nice and beyond is also talking about winter squash, but different ones: courge de Nice, potimarron, ridged courge musquée and such like. For her first ever WHB entry (welcome, Rosa!) she's come up with a Provençal classic Tian de courge. Rosa is originally from Canada, but has been working as a food critic and cookbook writer in France for the last dozen years. You can get a glimpse of her life by visiting her blog!

Kevin (Toronto, Canada) of Closet Cooking is exploring the Japanese kabocha squash this week and creates a beautiful kabocha risotto. I love the garnish of deep fried sage leaves and toasted pumpkin seeds. I've been thinking of making a pumpkin risotto myself recently, and will definitely use toasted pumpkin seeds on top.

KÖÖMNED - CARAWAY SEEDS Ilva (Tuscany, Italy) of Lucullian Delights was thinking of me when deciding which dish to enter for this week's WHB - how sweet is that!? You see, I had told her previously that I really like caraway seeds - a perfect spice to spice up a sauerkraut stew or rye bread and many other dishes. You can see her beautiful creation caraway carrots sweetly resting on a bed of soft goat's cheese. However, if you don't like caraway seeds, then you can use similar-looking (bot NOT similar-tasting!) cumin seeds in this recipe.

LEHTSINEP - MUSTARD LEAVES Strata (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) of My Bay Area Garden is letting us know about mustard as a salad green and sandwich layer. I grew some mustard leaves in a container this summer, and really liked their subtle mustardy kick! Head over to Strata's blog - she even tells you about different mustard leaf varieties - just look at the colours!!

Lissie (Bangalore, India) of Salt & Spice blog has made a coriander and mint chutney that she uses to make this great-looking ribbon sandwich. What a great idea, don't you think?

Syrie (Vancouver, Canada) of Taste Buddies blog used mint both to season and garnish her lamb biryani and to make her after-dinner mint tea. Both very comforting, don't you think? Mint is one of Syrie's favourite herbs. I drink a lot of mint tea, using mint from my mum's garden, but I must admit I've neglected mint as a herb.

PAPRIKA - BELL PEPPERMandira (Michigan, USA) of Ahaar: pleasure and sustenance has been throwing some mushrooms and green peppers in with her baked tilapia - a great dish if you need to eat more fish and vegetables!

PEET - BEETROOT/BEET Shaun (Auckland, New Zealand) of Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow obviously knows that I've got a soft spot for beetroot. His entry - Beetroot Risotto (adapted from Diane Forley & Catherine Young's The Anatomy of a Dish) - has already been printed out for perusal in our kitchen a.s.a.p. There are two steps to the recipe - first you need to pickle the beetroots, then make the risotto using those pickled beets, but it sure looks lovely!

Sophie (Oxford, England) of Mostly Eating shares a recipe for A warm beetroot, sumac and sweet potato salad that goes well with feta cheese. Sumac is also a great ingredient to use in this salad - its sharpness complementing the earthiness of the beets so well. I love her photo of small different-coloured beets - aren't they cute??

PETERSELL - PARSLEYKatie (France) of Thyme for Cooking has still got plenty of parsley in her French garden, and she's whisked up this gorgeously yellow parsley and mushroom omelette. If WHB were about giving points, she'd get an extra one for calling me her very favourite Estonian :)

Anna (Sydney, Australia) of Morsels & Musings is using parsley to garnish her Lebanese breakfast dish Fatteh. The dish also contains lots of chickpeas, and sounds really good, so head over to read Anna's recipe.

PILI - PILI NUTSJoey (Manila, Philippines) of the lovely 80 Breakfasts pounded some native pili nuts into this pretty pili nut pesto. Sounds like something to try when I'm ever on these faraway islands!! I must admit I had to search an online database for the Estonian equivalent of pili nuts (Canarium ovatum). Turns out the plant is called pili-kanaripuu and the fruit is pili. Who would have known!?

POMMU e. BAKLAŽAAN - AUBERGINE/EGGPLANT Patricia (São Paulo, Brazil) Technicolor Kitchen has been making Tomato, Minas cheese and eggplant salad in her kitchen. Patricia used Minas cheese - queijo Minas frescal - in a salad, which is a Brazilian speciality, but bocconcini would do, so you can all try the salad yourself. (And if you prefer reading the Portuguese-language version, then click here).

Ramona (Alexandria, VA) of The Houndstooth Gourmet is also presenting a rosemary recipe, namely Rosemary, Olive and Honey Quick Bread. The bread looks beautiful and so comforting that I'm tempted to make it already this week. Luckily, I've got two pots of rosemary on my windowsill, so the ingredients are at hand..

SIBUL - ONIONAs a former resident of Bonnie Scotland, it always delights me to hear from Scotland. So when an email poppled into my inbox from Holler (Scotland) of Tinned Tomatoes, I was very excited and headed straight over to check our her recipe for Apple & Red Onion Chutney. Go and admire the cute labels she has made!

SPINAT - SPINACHJennifer is blogging over at Like to Cook and she submitted a recipe for Spinach and chickpea soup. According to Jennifer, it's perfect on a chilly autumn day, which makes it perfect for pretty much anyone living on a Northern hemisphere at the moment :)

TOMAT - TOMATO Susan (Missouri, USA) of the award-winning Farmgirl Fare blog baked a fabulous-looking fresh tomato and basil whole wheat sourdough bread. This bread is extra special, as the recipe was sent to Susan by one of her readers back in August, so it's a fan mail recipe. Susan has a recently started a small artisanal bread bakery at her farm, so no wonder she comes up with this beautiful loaf! (I must admit that Susan's banner is almost as beautiful as mine, so if you haven't seen it yet, then pop over:)

TŠILLIPIPAR - CHILLIMargot (London, UK) of the Coffee & Vanilla: euro-caribbean food blog is mixing Polish, Dominican and British elements in her kitchen. For this week's WHB she recreates a recipe from UKTV Food, but adds her own twist. The resulting Fruit & Cheese Pastry with Sweet Chilli Sauce looks most intriguing and appetising, using both pears and apples, as well as feta and mozzarella cheese. Margot serves this with sweet chilli sauce, and she also provides a little more information about small and devillish bird eye chilli peppers.

VÜRTSKÖÖMNED - CUMIN SEEDSSher (Davis, California, US) of What Did You Eat blog highlights the role of cumin in her chicken and tomatillo stew. The recipe is adapted from Food&Wine, but Sher wonders why the end result has such a different colour in reality compared to the magazine photo. Any suggestions?

LOTS OF DIFFERENT VEGETABLESMike (Florida, USA) of Mike's Table has made a vegetable pizza. It's hard to highlight one particular herb or vegetable - the pizza is full of pure vegetable goodness, so do check out the recipe yourself. Mike has also provided good step-by-step photos.

Andrea (Northern Virginia/DC Metro, USA) of Andrea's Recipes has submitted a very informative and helpful post on making vegetable stock. I've only recently started making my own vegetable and fish stock, and can confirm that it makes all the difference (though I do cheat sometimes with my Marigold Vegetable Bouillon powder:)

Gretchen (Lima, Peru) of Canela y Comino is also using a whole range of vegetables for her submitted entry, Thai Style Stir Fried Chicken. There's onions, carrots, mushrooms, and broccoli, and Gretcshen kindly provides nutritional information on all these ingredients.

27 comments:

What a marvelous idea! Now I'm going to google 'Estonian' to learn the history of the language...Great round-up, lovely words, I'll be back in the morning with my coffee for a good read and book-mark session ;-)

Pille, darling - I love that you have added your spin to hosting duties by classifying each entry in Estonian according to its principal herb or vegetable. The summaries are concise yet inspire one to visit each blogger's page. A great round-up, and I hope you and K. enjoy the beetroot risotto!

What a wonderful roundup Pille! Thank you for your kind words, too. Now I need to go make sure I'm not overloading my poor computer by opening up so many of these links at once! So many delicious recipes to investigate.

I loved the line-up Pille, as everbody else has said, it was inspired to list everyone's posts in alphabetical order by ingredients and great to learn a thing or two as you go! Very interesting. Must go visit the pages now! Thanks for adding me!

That was a fascinating trip into Estonian vocab - thanks Pille! Interesting to see soe Germanic trends and similarities to Afrikaans - we call parsley pietersilie which is hardly a million miles from the Estonian :)

Great roundup - people's creativity week after week never ceases to amaze me!

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